07/02/06

FRANCISQUITO JOINS THE SEARCH!

An operational change has been made at the Francisquito Observatory which enables our own limited search for Near Earth Objects.  Francisquito will typically schedule NEO search runs during the period surrounding and including the full Moon. This scheduling complements the reduced activity by research telescopes during the period of greatest lunar glare, and corresponding reduced need for NEO discovery confirmations. Because Francisquito's main telescope mirror is small in diameter (30cm) compared to the large research telescopes, and its CCD imager is also relatively small, about 1.5 hours of imaging time is required to scan a section of the sky that is about one Moon-diameter wide by one Moon-Diameter tall, to an adequately faint magnitude. The practical limiting brightness magnitude for Francisquito's instrumentation in NEO search mode is about 19.5 for a slow moving object (less than 0.8"/min). See the NEO Search Log linked from the "Operations" page for details on NEO search activity.